Something Ancient (There's Nothing New)
by demisteverogers
Summary: The legends make it seem so simple. The rise and fall of a glorious kingdom all at Morgana's hands. She's the temptress, the sorceress, the villain. It doesn't surprise her, though. She's always known that the world doesn't cope too well with grey areas.


There is a castle at the end of the world. Of course there is. There always is.

There's always a castle and there's always a story about deciding what to do with the castle. You can rule in it and make a home of it, or knock down its walls and scrape out its insides. You can give it to the people or use it to imprison the people. Either way, it's still a castle at the end of the world. That's not something you can cover up or ignore. The end will always be there. It'll always press along your back, your sides, run down the length of your arms and in between your fingers. It'll always whisper in your ear the secrets you shouldn't know or want to know. It'll tell you _hurry, prepare yourself before the storm_ even though both you and it know you never can.

So this castle is Arthur's, it's Morgana's, it's Merlin's and Gwen's and Uther's. It belongs to all of them in one way or another and they all decide its fate one way or another.

Arthur will see it flourish. Arthur will build it up to the heavens and further still. Merlin will whisper to it in the dead of night. He will tell it fables and love stories so that it might know a home beyond the struggles it has seen. In the day, he will close his eyes and deny any ownership of it at all. Gwen will weave it flower crowns with her own two hands. She'll sing it songs, lullabies, and pray it will no longer cry over its long dead monarchs. Uther will dress it in jewels and finery so that it may better hide its bloody courtyards and jagged scars.

And Morgana? Morgana will see it burn.

So there's a castle at the end of the world, and it still doesn't know who it belongs to, and one way or another its story is going to end too.

* * *

Once, when they were children, Arthur and Morgana had come across Queen Ygraine's crown. They had been too reckless to care that it was a treasure hidden away in a chamber they weren't even meant to know about and too young to know of its importance or to whom it belonged.

Arthur had grabbed it, careless and rough, and looked at it as one would a complicated piece of art. As if he were trying to gleam a meaning from it. But then he had shrugged, deeming it unimportant, before placing it upon her head. (An irony neither of them would realize until decades later, and one they'd never appreciate.)

And so they had spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the crown resting crookedly upon Morgana's curls. Their games ranged from embarrassingly simple to overly complex. In one, Arthur completed idiotic dares she imagined up so that she might knight him. In another, they rode off together in battle to fight off the evil sorcerers and their towering dragons.

It all ended, of course, when Uther saw them. And it ended abruptly. Before then, Morgana had never had a cause to fear Uther. But she had frozen in place the second she saw his expression. Oh, how she had never seen such an expression until that day. Nor had she ever seen him move so swiftly.

It seemed as though it only took him a second before he was snatching the crown off of her head.

* * *

Her first week in Camelot, after, is spent repeating the words _I hate you_ in her head. Sometimes they are targeted at random passersby. Ignorant nobles and peasants who have all gathered around to witness an execution as if it were a theatrical performance. An entertainment. Sometimes she even thinks it at Camelot itself. As if she could damn the entirety of the kingdom and the land it sits upon to hell. Mostly, she thinks it at Merlin and Uther. Merlin, it seems, is the only one who can read her mind, for he always seems to be able to tell when the brunt of her thoughts turn to him.

(She thinks it the loudest at both Arthur and Gwen. Mostly so that she might be able to convince herself.)

* * *

She was five, and staying in Camelot during the war. Everything in the castle felt too big for her. She found herself in a constant state of reaching for something. Her arms above her head, her hands grabbing at air, her balance uncertain as she stood on her tiptoes.

Meaning she had a lot of experience with the stomach lurching feeling that came right before a fall.

Her nursemaid had come and found her one day after a month of her staying in Camelot. She had taken one look at Morgana and, seeming to realize that Morgana was ignorant to whatever was happening, simply pulled her into her lap. There she had told Morgana to wait. _Wait, love, just wait. I'm so sorry dear, but we have to wait_. She never said what they were waiting for. Still that feeling came. As if she was just about to take a tumble. Then Uther had found them. Uther who, at the time, was all but a stranger to her. Albeit, a stranger that treated her all too fondly, but a stranger none the less.

Uther hadn't hesitated to tell her. Nor had he sugarcoated it. "_Sir Go- your father has died in the war._"

She hadn't believed him, of course. She hadn't even believed him when it came time to burn the funeral prye. Or to find her new living arrangements. She only believed him when the war ended, and months passed, and still her father had not come to her. And that's when she fell.

(Her nursemaid was a kind, aged woman by the name of Molle. She was accused of witchcraft and executed when Morgana was only thirteen. Late at night, when Morgana couldn't sleep, Molle used to whisper her stories. And if some of those stories were about kind, lonely witches who just wanted to find peace, than what did it matter? It never did anyone any _harm_.)

* * *

_Some people are born to be queen._

She wonders what they thought, after. The poor, defenseless citizens of Camelot. They thought she'd be queen, after all. Perhaps she didn't go about it in the way they imagined.

What a fucking joke.

* * *

She often wonders what would have happened had she trusted Gwen with her magic at the very beginning. She knows now, deep in her bones, that Gwen would have stayed loyal to her. Gwen would have been steadfast in her defense of Morgana. Could Gwen have been the one to stop it all? Morgana thinks, in the deepest corners of her mind, that she could've. _Of course_ she could've. Morgana cannot imagine herself willingly betraying Camelot had Gwen been in it, aware and loving all the same.

But that's not how it happened. That's not how it was _meant_ to happen.

Still, thoughts like that can haunt.

* * *

Merlin is possibly the only person Morgana knows who could kill someone twice. Merlin is the only person Morgana knows who she'd foolishly let close enough to kill _her_ twice. So suddenly that's it. It's over. She's dead. Until, of course, she isn't.

* * *

She is two years old and sitting on her mother's lap. She grabs her mother's hair, long and blonde, and plays with it in her hands. She is too young to notice that her mother won't look at her directly.

* * *

It never really weighs out in the end, does it? Not to her, anyway. There is no great good that can compensate for all the evil that happens.

She lives through the invention of electricity, cars, airplanes, and smartphones. She watches the civil rights movements and the women's rights movement spark into life. She reads books where people hope and pray for even a spark of magic to be real.

Then comes the guns, the atomic bombs, the fighter pilots, the nuclear warfare. The hate crimes and gaslighting and mockery at the thought of any sort of utopia. The slow dying out of almost all that is magic. There is no room in this new land for King Arthur's Camelot. It is, perhaps, better suited for Uther's version of a golden age.

It just never fucking ends.

* * *

She rarely lets herself think of Arthur. Arthur was her first friend, her first crush, her first rival. _Her baby brother._

By the gods, she doesn't know what to do with those facts in the face of all she's done. In the face of all they've done to each other. But she has to figure it out, doesn't she? After all, he's waiting in the water. He's waiting for Merlin, for Camelot, for Albion. Maybe, if she's lucky, he's waiting for her. She's going to have to face him sooner or later. He's going to wake up one day.

What is she going to _say?_

* * *

She meets Merlin at the castle at the end of the world. Or, rather, the grounds it used to sit upon. She can't even fathom the years that have passed since she last saw him. She looks at him and she doesn't have it in her to hate him. She wonders if he can still hate her. If so, he doesn't show it. Instead he sits down beside her and looks out towards the horizon. She feels sluggish in his presence. Tired. Like time has finally caught up with her. She rests her head on his shoulder and pretends, at least for a while, that they are back in Camelot. When she had never tasted poison or, worse yet, the betrayal that came with it and he had still been so young and innocent. When Arthur was a stupid, noble prince who belonged to the daylight. When Gwen had yet to know what it was like to lose everything and still smiled as though the world was on her side.

She sits there and sleeps with her eyes open.

They wait, together.


End file.
